The "Superwoman" Mask

I never understood what failing at something meant until I become a mother. I had excelled in my studies and career – in fact I had exceeded everyone’s expectations, my own included. Life felt great, it was exciting and fulfilling. The next step in my life journey was to start a family and in my mind, motherhood was going to be magical, joyful and blissful
 
My eldest child cried for the first 4 months of his life for 12-14 hours no-stop. No matter what I tried, and I tried a lot, I couldn’t ease his pain. After a decade of helping people, some even make miraculous recoveries, I couldn’t help my own son. I remember feeling like a failure, a massive fraud. I didn’t want to let anyone know how I was feeling, so I hid it. How could I be such an expert in my field, yet such a failure in my personal life? What would people think? Feeling like a fraud and a failure made me feel weak and worthless, and left me constantly questioning my abilities as a mother.
 
Joining the Mother-Child classes just made me feel worse as all I saw was these perfect mothers with their perfect babies. It made the critical voice in my head shout even louder at me. I didn’t want the Moms know that I saw myself as a failure, so I would do what I now call ‘Putting on the Superwoman Mask’. I would hide all my insecurities, fears and feelings of failure behind this mask of confidence, perfection, and happiness. I always made sure the mask was perfectly in place. This worked well for months, then one day, the mask just didn’t fit properly. All those feelings and thoughts exploded loudly in my head making me feel extremely insecure. I felt I couldn’t hide the truth anymore, that I was lying to them and betraying their trust. One day, whilst watching the kids play, as I was sipping my coffee, I found my courage and spoke up. I told the Moms how I looked up to them, how I admired them for being perfect Moms. I envied how they had everything together and how easily it was all coming to them, when I felt like I was this monumental failure.
 
I was met with silence and stillness, which made my inner critical voice scream even louder at me. Then slowly each Mom there told me they were feeling exact the same way about themselves. They too were putting this Superwoman Mask on every day. I was completely stunned as I listened to the Moms. I asked them why, if we were all feeling the same as I, why had no one said anything earlier? The reason for the silence – they felt that the rest of the group wouldn’t accept them if they knew they were a ‘fake’.
 
I learnt some valuable lessons that day. Lessons, that 14 years down the line, I find that I’m still teaching woman who are struggling to find their work-life balance in this modern-day world. These lessons are-
 

• Be honest with yourself

 
Make time to check in with yourself daily and notice your feelings about yourself. You don’t have to broadcast it to the world, but by accepting them you are moving one step closer to finding your inner balance and inner acceptance.
 

• Nurture and support your tribe

 
Woman have a natural tendency to nurture and be empathetic. Create tribes where we all feel safe to understand and accept each other just as we are. Our tribe is our safe-zone; we should never feel that we are not good enough and that we are not going to be supported by our tribe.
 

• Be courageous

 
Stop living in fear of what other people may think. If someone thinks less of you because they know your truth, then they were never part of your tribe.
 
You should never put yourself in a position where you are lying to yourself and those around you, so that you can be accepted by them. Be courageous to express how you are feeling and you will be pleasantly surprised to see a) how many people are feeling the same and, b) the support and help you will get from those around you.
 

• Accepting your vulnerability is not you being weak

 
We all have something that makes us feel vulnerable. What makes one person feel strong makes another feel vulnerable, but the reality is that vulnerability exists in each of us. It makes us human. It makes us feel things, challenges us and makes us changes. When we are honest with what makes us vulnerable, we can connect to our true strength and we don’t need to put on a mask to make us feel strong. By accepting our vulnerability, we can channel that energy to create change, growth, joy and a sense of belonging in all aspects of our lives.
 

• Learn your limits

 
Society is constantly telling us that we are not beautiful enough, young enough, thin enough, intelligent enough… The message is that we are not enough. Our mind then tells us we need to do more, be more. Naturally we take on more things, juggle more plates and hide the parts of ourselves that don’t fit into other people’s ideals so we can fit the “superhuman—woman-with-super--multi-tasking-power” box. We hide parts of ourselves and lie to ourselves, we tell ourselves we are OK and that we can manage it all, when in truth, we have burnt ourselves out and are so far from who we are authentically meant to be that all that is left is an empty shell-like version of ourselves. 
 
 
Knowing your limits means:-

• Saying No; because you can recognise that you already have too much on your plate.
• Stop feeling guilty that you are not meeting others’ needs and not be accepted by them.
• Stop trying to match what you feel other people expect from you.
• Learn to ask for help. Everyone needs a little help now and again. It’s not a sign of weakness. Life’s a circle; there will be times you will be able to help someone, then there will be times you will need the help.

When we take off our “Superwoman mask”, we connect to our authentic courageous self, our imperfectly perfect self and our vulnerably strong self. Be woman, Be you, Be proud!